Where East Meets West

Blessed Raymond Lull is an extremely interesting saint. He was the first missionary to seriously and intelligently try to bring the Moslems over to Christ. In his young years, he had a vision of Christ strongly disapproving of the Crusades against the Mohammedans, and telling him to convert them through prayers, love, tears and martyrdom.

Blessed Raymond decided to learn Arabic, in order to acculturate himself into the Moslem world and understand everything about them. He could not find, however, one Arab willing to teach him the language (so great was the hate between them and Christians at that period), so he decided to buy a Saracen slave who would be his professor. He spent nine years of his life learning Arabic with patience, to prepare himself for his mission. At one point, his slave cursed Christ and Raymond slapped him in the face for this. The slave, enraged, attempted to kill St. Raymond, but only wounded him seriously. The slave, thinking that he would be condemned to death for what he did, ended up committing suicide. This shook up Raymond deeply and he went off to a mountain, to work on his character and reparate his faults.

Anthony Mellace